Not ready for prime time
Written: Dec 01 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Compact, slick looking, speakers included
Cons: Horrendous installation, doesn't play Windows Media streams, couldn't even play most of my MP3 files
The Bottom Line: It could possibly be worth buying if they make some major revisions to the firmware, but for now it's simply not acceptable.
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| jpalonus's Full Review: Linksys WMLS11B Wireless-B (802.11b) Music System |
The idea behind the Linksys Wireless-B Music System is a fabulous one. In fact, back in the '90s when Larry Ellison was touting the coming age of the Internet appliance, the Internet boombox was the only example I could think of that would ever make sense. But at that time there was no WiFi, and to make such a thing work it would have to have its own modem, DSL, or Ethernet connection, so I thought maybe even an Internet boombox would never take off. Then the Federal government decided that Internet broadcasters owe the record companies exhorbitant licensing fees & reporting requirements, and the unions forced many radio stations off the Internet for a few years until they came up with the ability to mute their commercials so they wouldn't have to pay extra licensing fees to the commercial actors.
Slowly, Internet radio and Internet broadcasters recovered, mp3 players & music downloading services blossomed, and then WiFi was invented. So today, the concept of an Internet-based audio player starts to make sense again.
This year, several manufacturers have come out with WiFi enabled players: Philips has their Streamium, SlimDevices has their Squeezebox, Rokulabs has the SoundBridge, and SMC, NetGear and Linksys all have introduced low-end models.
We bought the Linksys at Fry's on sale for $99 minus a $15 rebate. The NetGear was also on sale for $99 with a $55 rebate! But the Linksys includes speakers and looks like one of those small office-size stereos. It's not battery powered, so it's not a true portable, but I was still intrigued by the possibility of moving this around from room to room or outside to the patio in addition to simply hooking it up to the living room stereo system.
INSTALLATION
Out of the box, everything looks good. It includes a short foldout installation guide.
Installation consists of 2 main activities: Configuring the unit & loading the music server, and hooking up the speakers.
First, the good news: The 2nd part, wiring up the speakers, went smoothly. They attach securely to the base unit. Then you have to separately plug in 2 sets of speaker cables plus a DC power cable to the speakers. This struck me as rather lame - you end up with a miniature jumble of audio cables behind your miniature stereo unit. You'd think that with a small unit such as this, where the speakers attach securely to the base unit, the audio would connect internally when you attach the speakers themselves. But for all I know this could be par for the course for all those miniature stereo systems, so I don't take any points off for that. You can also detach the speakers & place them up to 3' apart.
The installation guide makes configuration seem straightforward, but we spent maybe 6 hours total trying to get the darn thing to work!
To configure the unit, you plug it in to an Ethernet port on your PC with the included Ethernet cable. You run the reasonably straightforward Setup program from the CDROM. Then you unplug the Ethernet cable.
The rest of the configuration process consists of making your WiFi network recognize the new device. In theory it shouldn't be any harder than it was to connect your PCs & laptops to the network in the first place.
FIRST GOTCHA: The docs don't mention that you have to set the unit to Wired mode while it's connected via the Ethernet cable. To do this, navigate your way thru the little LCD menu, via the pushbuttons or the remote's arrow keys, to "Network Setup > Change to wired". If you don't do that, the PC won't be able to download the configuration information to the unit. After the wired portion of the configuration is done, remember to select "Network Setup > Change to wireless".
SECOND GOTCHA: The device only understands WEP security, so if you set up your WiFi network with the better (more secure) WPA-PSK security, you'll have to back down & use WEP for your whole network to accomodate it. (The NetGear unit's webpage implies that it only recognizes WEP too. I don't know about the other makers.)
THIRD GOTCHA: If you're running a secure network where you only let devices with certain MAC addresses connect, make sure you add this device's MAC address to the Wireless Access Point or router's configuration.
FOURTH GOTCHA: This unit uses 802.11b. If your WiFi network is an 11g, make sure you have it configured to recognize both 11g AND 11b.
FIFTH GOTCHA: The box & docs say that you install a "music server" on your PC - which is a program that feeds the music files & Internet streams to the device. But when you run Setup, what gets installed is the Musicmatch 8 Jukebox Basic. You can easily assume that this is just some extra piece of free fluff that they threw in to the mix, and that the all-important "music server" somehow didn't get installed.
But it turns out this IS the server. The Setup program was too busy trying to convince you to spring for the paid version of Musicmatch to mention this to you. The only indication is a single checkbox in the Options dialog. Checking this box starts up the server, and unchecking it shuts it down. You will find this out if you happen to stumble upon the knowledgebase article deep inside the Linksys website that talks about troubleshooting the device when it won't connect to the server. Gee, thanks for the info, guys.
Ordinarily none of these things would be gotcha's. But if you get tripped up by one of them, neither the software nor the device itself will give you any clue to what the problem is! So you're reduced to flailing about, making educated (or wild) guesses about what might be the problem.
The Indian helpdesk people tried to be helpful, but I got the impression that they weren't familiar with the device. I don't know if their help scripts are any better than the knowledgebase articles found on the Linksys website, because I kept getting cut off in the middle of the conversations before we got down to actual troubleshooting.
PERFORMANCE
After 5 hours of flailing, we finally got the thing to "see" the music server. You can choose "Playlists" in the little LCD menu and choose any playlists you've defined in Musicmatch. Or choose "Favorites". Or "Browse" your big list of music files directly. This is especially fun since you only get THREE LINES of display to work with!
It also features a huge list of 800+ Internet radio stations that are streaming in MP3. Scrolling thru this list as you read it off the tiny, three-row LCD screen is also a laff riot.
SIXTH GOTCHA: This device does not play WMA streams. But most radio stations stream their broadcasts in Microsoft Windows Media (WMA) or RealAudio (RAM) formats. Only two stations that I listen to (out of several) stream their programs in MP3. This device is useless for the others.
SEVENTH GOTCHA: This device is able to play LESS THAN HALF OF THE MP3s I have, HALF THE STREAMS they themselves list in the Internet radio menu, and NEITHER OF THE 2 MP3 STREAMS I WANTED TO HEAR! I can play the music files and radio streams just fine thru the Musicmatch Jukebox (as well as other players on my Windows machine), but only a few will play thru the Linksys! When you click on a song, playlist, or stream, you'll get a screen saying something like "buffering %80" for a half-second, then it goes back to the list of songs. And no sound. And NO indication of why. Maybe the files' sample rates are too high. Or some other slight incompatibility with the MP3 standard that the player's software doesn't handle well. Or not. Who knows.
So after all the frustration of installing this device, IT JUST DOESN'T DO THE JOB! This is NOT ready for prime time. In fact, THIS MODEL IS NOT READY FOR THE STORE SHELVES.
They could conceivably come out with a new firmware revision that fixes some of these performance problems. But so far they're only up to 1.0.9 (from the initial 1.0.6). For me, that's a gamble I'm not going to take.
(sigh) Maybe next year.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 85
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Epinions.com ID:
jpalonus
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Reviews written: 2
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